Don't
Drink the Water
No
subject was safe
with him,
especially
the
weather.
I watched
as he worked
the aisle
of the bus,
moving
from seat to seat,
diagonally along the rows
attempting to engage
the
unwary in conversation,
"Lousy
weather we're
having,
isn't it?
I'll bet
you don't know
why
either, it's them
weather
satellites
the
government's been
putting
up in the sky.
Messes up
the atmosphere,
that's
really what
they're
for, who do you
think
they're called
weather
satellites?
I'll bet
you never
thought
of that before
did
you? And that's
not
the half
of it.
The
government's been
putting
stuff in our
drinking
water,
supposed
to be for your
teeth but
it makes
people
crazy."
"That
would explain
what
happened to you,"
I said,
"Wouldn't it?
I'll bet
the moral
of the
story is:
Don't
Drink the Water."
"Who are
you anyway?"
he asked
me.
"A
government agent
in
disguise." I said.
He turned
pure white,
pulled
the stop rope,
muttering, "I think
I'll walk
from now on."
I haven't
seen him since.
The Grand Marshall of Nowhere
Settling on the rickety, out of balance
bar stool, he said, “There’s a warrant
out for my arrest. On another planet.”
Most people making a statement
like that would be totally disregarded
under the assumption what he said
was just some obscure shock value,
in-the-moment thing or maybe
wishful thinking as in, “Hey, someone
out there, somewhere, wants me.”
Even if somewhere was some indefinable,
unrecognizable place in the cosmos,
and those doing the wanting were so
alien, we couldn’t begin to envision
what they were like and what they wanted
with him. Though we were welcome,
of course, to make a few wild guesses.
Maybe it was the way he looked,
that bold attempt to achieve instant recognition
that had largely succeeded. His look included
several outstanding features, not the least of
which were: a mostly shaved head,
now patched with stubble after inconsistent
attempts at grooming, remaining, exclamation
point waxed locks, stretched down the back
of his skull in a line, each dyed a garish
neon-like:
red, blue, green, yellow. His mascara highlighted
eyes with tattooed tear drops at the edge leaking
red down his
pocked marked cheeks toward
leather vest and pants. Gothic scrolled lettering
on
each forearm in black ink said : ZAK SABBATH.
His alternately gold capped and tobacco brown
stained teeth, had never been brushed in this
lifetime ,and an unhealthy cast to his
unfocused
eyes, suggested the unnatural yellow tinted
iris implants hadn’t taken and his sight
was shaky at best, so when he spoke
it was to a moving shadow somewhere
behind the bar, “I expect they’ll be here
to pick me up soon.
Might as we have
something to drink while I wait.”
“Like a Brother from Another Planet.”
“Just like that.”
“Stay away from the jukebox, it’s been
serviced.”
“Oh, really?
What did they do to it?”
“God only knows.”
He looked over toward the wall recess
where the infernal machine sat, emitting
its timeless, neon glow. His staring became
so fixed, so intent, you might think they
were communicating.
And maybe they were.
In their way.
Life
Cycles
They are the
worm people,
who sleep on
funeral parlor castoffs,
barely worn
sheets, a hundred hot rinses
could not remove
the scent of death from,
an odor they
wore like second skins,
peeling off as
if once upon a time,
they’d spent too
much time in the sun
and now all
memory of it must be shed,
revealing an
unnatural pallor of time spent
in airless
caves, stagnant barroom holes,
inhaling each
other’s stale breath,
rust flaking
from unwashed-for-decades
hair, no longer
dandruff, but something
scaled, bed bug
sores or skin ulcerations,
partially
healed, leaking fetid fluids they
share like
communicable diseases,
drinking the
welfare checks of long-dead
relatives they
claim as alive, forging
signatures,
census forms, keeping the bodies
on ice in deep
freezer chests until the power
fails and a new
life cycle begins.
